Car-related lore goes back a long time; to the very beginning in fact. Legend holds that Karl Benz's wife Bertha "borrowed" the car (and we mean the car) to take their two children to her folks' house some 50 miles away. The farthest Karl had ever driven it was perhaps a mile or two. I'm going to let Dan Neil take it from here:

That evening, Bertha wired Karl to say they had arrived safely. But not, as it turned out, without incident. Bertha was obliged to clean out a clogged fuel line with her hatpin and mend an ignition wire with one of her garters. When the brake shoe started to give way, she stopped at a farrier's in Bauschlott for a block of leather to replace it. In Wiesloch, she stopped at an apothecary to fill up on benzene (this pharmacy still bills itself as the world's first filling station). And so it happened that the world's first motorist was, in fact, a woman.

And while that is a great story, our favorite involves an angular pony car from Japan. Don't believe the "Star of Origin" corporate spin. Mitsubishi named it "Stallion," but the guy on the other end of the phone heard "Starion."

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